• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Interfluency

Tagline
  • +1-901-288-3018
  • Contact
    • English
      • Español

Mobile menu contact icon

Mobile menu contact information (EN)

  • Telephone: +1-901-288-3018
  • Contact Us
  • Home
  • About
    • What We Do
    • The Word “Interfluency”
    • Our Team
    • Clients
  • Services
    • Linguistic
      • Translation
      • Interpreting
      • Writing/Editing
    • Cultural
    • Consulting
  • Resources
    • For Translators
    • For Clients
    • General Interest
  • Testimonials
  • Blog
  • Search
You are here: Home / Posts

Posts

2015-02-21 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Ladybug, ladybug, don’t fly away!

Enlace para español/Link for Spanish

Dear reader:

We’re used to thinking of cultural difference.  But some things in this world are so inherently beautiful that people everywhere, and always, seem to have loved them. To name a few: butterflies, roses, kites, rainbows.

Este diminuto insecto, ¿puede que sea amado por todas las culturas humanas?

Is it possible that this little insect is loved by all human cultures?

A small, flying insect, usually red and spotted—English “ladybug,” Spanish mariquita (little Mary), vaquita de San Antonio (St. Anthony’s little cow), and other names—also has a strong claim on membership in this select group.

The English and Spanish names are subtly linked: the “lady” in “ladybug” seems to refer to the Virgin Mary.

Some others: French la bête à bon Dieu (the good Lord’s bug), Russian bozha kapovka (God’s little cow), Dutch lieveheerbeestje (the dear Lord’s little animal), Yiddish moyshe rabbeynus ferdele (or) kiyele (Moses’s little horse, or little cow).

Why this affection so strong it often crosses into the sacred? The ladybug’s pretty colors are not unlike a butterfly’s; the spots remind us of cows.  Ladybugs readily rest or walk on a human hand.  And mariquita, a farmer’s friend, eats such agricultural pests as the aphid.

Some religious traditions, like Judaism, shrink from naming the Deity, so the prophet Moses is used instead. Spanish also steers clear of God in naming this insect, displacing to the Virgin or St. Anthony.

Maybe the ladybug is one of those utterly joyous things whose contemplation once moved Robert Louis Stevenson to write: The world is so full of a number of things/I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.

             ¡Buenas palabras/Good words!

Pablo

Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT is a Certified Translator (ATA/American Translators Association) eng>spa and a Certified Interpreter (Tennessee State Courts) eng<>spa, as well as a recognized trainer in the fields of translation, interpreting, and cultural competence. He has over 25 years experience in these fields. An earlier version of this column was written for the Jan. 24-30, 2015 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) as part of his bilingual weekly column Mysteries & Enigmas of Translation/Misterios y Enigmas de la Traducción.  

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", cultura, culture, Davis, English, español, inglés, Interfluency, ladybug, mariquita, Memphis, Pablo, San Antonio, Spanish, traducción, traductor, translation, translator, vaquita, vaquita de San Antonio

2015-02-17 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

So who is this Joe Blow, anyway?

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish

Dear reader,

What do you call someone whose identity you don’t know? What about someone who doesn’t exist? How do you refer to someone whose name you can’t quite remember? These and other, similar, sorts of linguistic situations, each subtly different from the others, are surprisingly common—and they’ve given rise to an amazing panoply of pseudo or quasi-names.

El nombre ficticio de "John Q. Public" es muy usado en EEUU en el ámbito publicitario y en el gubernamental.

The fictitious John Q. Public and his somewhat lesser-known sister (or perhaps spouse) Jane are commonly used in advertising and government communication.

You can say a selective employer “won’t hire just any Tom, Dick or Harry”—or  “any Joe Blow” or “Joe Schmoe.” A Hispanic name that expresses ordinariness to the point of anonymity is Juan Pérez—akin to “John Smith.”  In a somewhat more formal vein, advertising and government language often makes use of a fictitious “John Q. Public” and, somewhat less commonly, “Jane Q. Public.”

The heritage of Arabic, which medieval Spanish speakers lived cheek-to-jowl with for eight centuries (to A.D. 1492), gave the language such anonymous or “placeholder” names as  Fulano (or Fulano de Tal), Zutano, and Mengano. Their sisters might be Fulana, Zutana, and Mengana. There are many others.

What if someone’s name is on the tip of your tongue? English has “What’s-his-name” or, even less elegantly, “What’s-his-face” or the potentially insulting “So-and-so.”

Coso in some Spanish-speaking countries can refer to someone in this situation (or when the thing you can’t quite remember is the name of an object—as in English “thing-a-ma-jig”).  Fulanito and Fulanita can serve the same function for a person.

When you want to wash your hands of something, as in “Let George do it”, Argentine and Uruguayan Spanish offers a series of funny names: Que lo haga Magoya (Let Magoya do it). This imaginary sucker is also called Montoto, Mongo, or Mongo Aurelio.

These characters can reappear when you don’t believe a word someone’s saying:  Andá a contarle a Magoya (Go tell it to Magoya). Or—and here the name’s not anonymous, but the phrase expresses the height of futility—Andá cantarle a Gardel (Go sing to Gardel), the greatest tango singer of all time. An English equivalent, popular from around the Spanish-American War to World War I, but still used:  “Tell it to the Marines.”

Yet another situation where we come up with a quasi-name is when we prefer not to overtly identify someone, but speaker and listener are both well aware of who’s being discussed—indeed, this person may himself or herself be present: “You-know-who got up on the wrong side of bed today,” which in Spanish might go this way: Uno (or female Una)  que yo sé se levantó con el pie izquierdo.

Finally, the reverse also happens: we use the name of a real person to designate a category of persons.  Phrases like “The Lebron Jameses and the Kobe Bryants of the world” are much used in English, though not absent from Spanish: Los Lebron James y los Kobe Bryant del mundo.

Good words! / ¡Buenas palabras!

Copyright ©2015 by Pablo J. Davis. All rights reserved.

Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT is a Certified Translator (ATA/American Translators Association) eng>spa and a Certified Interpreter (Tennessee State Courts) eng<>spa, as well as a recognized trainer in the fields of translation, interpreting, and cultural competence. He has over 25 years experience in these fields. An earlier version of this column was written for the Feb. 22-28, 2015 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) as part of his bilingual weekly column Mysteries & Enigmas of Translation/Misterios y Enigmas de la Traducción.  

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", Davis, Fulano, Interfluency, Joe Blow, Joe Schmoe, John Q. Public, Magoya, Mengano, Mongo, Montoto, names, nombres, Pablo, Pablo Davis, pseudónimos, pseudonyms, traducción, translation, Zutano

2015-02-14 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

“My better half”… the interesting way Spanish expresses this concept

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish

Dear reader,

Spanish speakers often say “mi media naranja” (literally: “my half-orange”) to mean “my husband,” “my wife,” etc.

The phrase has an informal, humorously affectionate tone, not unlike “my better half,” which is widely used by English speakers.

La cúpula del Monasterio del Escorial, Madrid. La palabra "cimborio" puede significar el cuerpo cilíndrico que sirve de base para la cúpula, o la cúpula misma, que también puede llamarse "bóveda" o... ¡"media naranja"!

The dome of the Monastery of El Escorial, near Madrid.  The Spanish word “cimborio” can refer to the cylindrical body that forms the base of the dome, or the dome itself, which can also be referred to as “cúpula,” “bóveda” (vault)… or even “media naranja” (literally: half-orange), which happens to be the popular Spanish equivalent of “my better half”!

A common explanation: since no two oranges are identical, each half-orange only has one possible match. In this view, media naranja isn’t just one’s mate, but the perfect match, something like “soul mate.”

Another, similar theory, widespread on the Web, traces the term to Plato’s Symposium, where Aristophanes speaks of (the already then) ancient notion that originally humans were double (man-woman, woman-woman, and man-man). Then, one day, Zeus decided to split them in two; since then, we’ve all been presumably searching for the literally missing half we long to be reunited with.

Aristophanes’s theory, despite the prestige of its ancient-Greek origin, tells us nothing about why the Spanish phrase happens to use a citrus fruit, in particular, to express this idea.

The real explanation may lie in architecture, of all places. The dome—as of a church—is known as a cúpula, or cimborio (which can also mean the cylindrical base on which the dome rests) or even as… our old friend, a media naranja, or half-orange! Cimborio itself derives from a Greek word for a certain type of fruit.

It could very well be that the vault of a domed church, which is a symbol and representation of Heaven, gives us a way of referring to the beloved—very much like the popular term of affection in Spanish, “mi cielo”—“my heaven.”

¡Buenas palabras… Good words!

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", better half, couple, Davis, enamorados, español, inglés, Interfluency, media naranja, Pablo, pareja, soul mate, soulmate, traducción, translation

2015-02-08 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Twists and wrongs

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish

Dear reader,

“Wrong,” “wrist,” and “wrench” look alike: it’s a resemblance that turns out to be a family one.  These words are cousins, descended from a common and ancient root.

En ingles, "wrench" (llave) y "wrong" (incorrecto, equivocado) forman parte de una familia de palabras que tiene que ver con lo torcido. En español se usa más un grupo de palabras emparentadas con "torcer".

In English, “wrench” and “wrong” are part of an ancient Germanic family of words beginning with wr-, all related to the notion of twisting. Spanish uses a Latin root for many of these objects and concepts, one related to the legal term “tort.”

What binds them together is the notion of twisting. “Wrong” comes to English on a Scandinavian route from a Proto-Germanic (the conjectured ancestor tongue of the family that includes German, Dutch, Danish, English, and others) root, *wrang- and long before that from Proto-Indo-European *wrengh- (to turn).

What’s wrong, then, is twisted.  Its opposite, “right,” comes from Latin rectus (straight). Colloquiallisms confirm the pair: a criminally dishonest person is “crooked,” a “crook,” while a “straight arrow” is honest and truthful speech is “straight up.”

A moral distinction, expressed aesthetically and geometrically.

Some descendants of wr-: “wrist” a body part that twists, “wrench” a tool for twisting, “wrinkle” twisted skin, “wry” mouth twisted in a half-smile; “wring” to squeeze by twisting; “writhe” to twist and turn in pain.

Spanish and its Romance relatives tend to express this sense through Latin roots for turning and twisting.  Spanish tuerto means “one-eyed,” French tort gave us the word for a civil wrong, The spinning lathe is Spanish torno. The root in distorsión is easily spotted—Latin tortus has influenced English too. “Torque” is an engine’s rotating force.

The ghastliest descendant of this family names the unspeakable act of inflicting physical or mental pain on someone who is completely under one’s power: the sadly not-extinct “torture.”

Copyright ©2014 by Pablo J. Davis. All rights reserved.

Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT is an Certified Translator (ATA/American Translators Association) eng>spa and a Certified Interpreter (Tennessee State Courts) eng<>spa, as well as a recognized trainer in the fields of translation, interpreting, and cultural competence. An earlier version of this column appeared in the Dec. 21-27, 2014 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) as part of the weekly bilingual column Mysteries & Enigmas of Translation/Misterios y Enigmas de la Traducción.  

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", Davis, distortion, English, español, Germanic, inglés, Intefluency, intérprete, Latin, mal, Pablo, palabras, Spanish, torcer, tort, tortura, torture, traducción, traductor, translation, words, wrench, wrinkle, wrong

2014-06-13 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

The “intergalactic kite” of the ’86 World Cup: the play and the call

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish.

Sunday, June 22 marks 28 years since quite possibly the greatest goal in World Cup history, Maradona’s second one against England in the 1986 quarterfinals in Mexico’s Azteca Stadium. (His goal earlier that game on a hand ball, a strong contender for the most infamous, is widely known as the “Mano de Dios” [Hand of God], which was how Maradona said it was scored.)  The drama of the moment transcended sport: it’s amazing, now, to realize that the brief but bloody Falklands War (Guerra de las Malvinas) had happened just four short years earlier, and particularly for Argentines the wounds were still fresh.

As brilliant as the play itself, in which the Argentine star started behind midfield and eluded a half-dozen English defenders on an electrifying drive capped by that unforgettable goal, was the call by Uruguayan announcer Víctor Hugo Morales. Indeed, Morales’s live narration of that goal deserves to be remembered for the ages as one of the most inspired improvisations ever recorded in the Spanish language.

El mágico pie izquierdo de Diego Armando Maradona, camino a su mítico segundo gol a Inglaterra en el Mundial de México, 1986; relatado, también con magia, por Víctor Hugo Morales.

The magical left foot of Diego Armando Maradona, on the way to his immortal second goal against England in the 1986 World Cup, in Mexico; announcer Víctor Hugo Morales’s call of the play was also magical.

(To follow the play, and the call, see http://tinyurl.com/diegoool; to read the call in the original Spanish, link here.)

Diego has the ball, Víctor Hugo the microphone, and your faithful servant the translation:

“The pass to Maradona, he’s got the ball, two defenders on him, he moves the ball, the genius of world soccer drives right, and he gets past the third defender, he could pass to Burruchaga… It’s still Maradona… Genius… genius… genius! Ta… ta… ta… ta… ta… ta… ta…! Goaaalll! Goaaalll!

“I want to cry! Holy God, long live soccer! Oh, what a goal! Diegoal! Maradona! I can’t help crying, forgive me. Maradona, in a memorable drive, in the greatest play of all time… Intergalactic kite, what planet did you come from, to leave so many Englishmen in the dust? To make the whole country into one great, clenched fist, shaking, shouting for Argentina? . . . Diegoal! Diegoal! Diego Armando Maradona! Sweet Lord, thank you for the game of football, for Maradona, for these tears, and for this Argentina 2, England 0.”

To transcribe this genial and spontaneous narration, to reduce it to words on a page or on a screen, can’t help but be somewhat arbitrary, can’t help but fall short; it’s almost impossible for the tamed, written words to capture the spark of the original. But even so, the wonderment comes through vividly. Morales’s call has it all: rhythm and passion, the inspired “intergalactic kite” image, the pulse provided by that string of very Uruguayan “ta’s,” symmetry, and the resolution offered by the harmonious sequence of thanks at the end, the voice descending from the emotional heights back to earth.

In little more than a hundred words, and even in those moments when he lost track of the specifics of the play, Víctor Hugo Morales managed to transmit the stupendous nature of what was unfolding before him, to convey his own astonishment, shared by millions of people. In those words, along with all the non-verbals that can’t be ignored (tone and volume, hoarseness, crying, tempo), he gave voice to what the fans were feeling, to an entire country, and more.

The result was memorable and moving: another brilliant goal (golazo).

A version of this essay was originally written for publication in the June 22, 2014 edition of La Prensa Latina (Memphis, Tennessee) as part of the weekly bilingual column on language and culture, “Misterios y Enigmas de la Traducción/Mysteries & Enigmas of Translation”.

Copyright ©2014 by Pablo J. Davis. All rights reserved. Se reservan todos los derechos.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: 1986, announcer, Diego, Maradona, Morales, play-by-play, soccer, Spanish, Victor, Víctor Hugo Morales, World Cup

2014-02-27 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

“Secret” languages or slangs

Estas dos personas ilustran el verbo "to razz" en ingles, una manera de abuchear o expresar desprecio. El origen de esa palabra está en la jerga rimada del Este de Londres, la llamada "rhyming slang".

These two individuals illustrate the verb “to razz,” which has its origins in Cockney rhyming slang and is indirectly connected with the word “fart.”

Enlace para español/Link here for Spanish

Dear reader,

The idea of a secret or encoded language is ancient, with obvious appeal to teenagers, colleagues in an occupation, prisoners—any group, really, that feels the need or desire to exclude outsiders from its communication.

In English, children have Pig Latin, where the first sound is moved to the end of the word, followed by ‘ay’: thus “ellohay” = hello. It’s similar to jeringoso, jerigonso o jerigonza (all derived from Span. jerga, Engl. “jargon”), which is a bit more complex: after each syllable comes ‘p’ and the vowel repeated, thus hopolapa = hola (hello), sipi = sí (yes), grapaciapas = gracias (thanks).

El vesre (the word revés, or reverse, itself reversed) long popular in Argentina and Uruguay inverts the order of syllables, though sometimes only approximately: yobaca = caballo (horse), jermu = mujer (woman), viorsi = servicio (bathroom), dolape = pelado (bald-headed man), lompa = pantalón (pants),  tidorpa = partido (game or match). When some action turns out to be useless, it’s common to hear vesre used in saying “fue al dope” (the phrase al pedo means useless, in vain; pedo itself means “fart” and thus the original sense of the phrase may well have been “as useless as a fart” or “like a fart in the wind”).

Victorian English back-slang was similar, though it inverted words letter-by-letter, rather than by syllable: “evig ti ot em” = give it to me. Apparently it was much used by shop clerks and street vendors to deceive customers.

Rhyming slang, a Cockney (East End of London) art, is great fun. Just a few examples: “slabs of meat” = feet, “trouble and strife” = wife. “Lee Marvin” = starvin’, “apples and pairs” = stairs, “bread and honey” = money. Often, further concealing the actual word intended, only the first part of the phrase is used, thus “I fell down the apples and broke me hand” = I fell down the stairs and broke my hand. So in rhyming slang, the rhyme is often implicit.

The verb to razz has its own amusing origin in rhyming slang. It means to jeer by using tongue and lips to imitate the sound of flatulence—and comes from “raspberry tart,” which is rhyming slang for “fart.” In the US, the same sound is also called a “Bronx cheer” (see illustration above).

Though none of these “languages” is hard to decode on paper, it’s not hard to imagine that when spoken at high speed they can be quite effective for secret communication. Quite apart from that use, these kinds of word play appeal to many users of language simply because they are fun and offer an arena for verbal creativity.

Good words! … ¡Buenas palabras!

Pablo

Copyright ©2014 by Pablo J. Davis. All rights reserved.

Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT,  is an ATA Certified Translator (Engl>Span) and a Supreme Court of Tennessee Certified Interpreter (Engl<>Span). An earlier version of this essay was originally published in the Mar. 2-8, 2014 edition of  La Prensa Latina, Memphis, Tennessee, as part of the weekly bilingual column “Mysteries & Enigmas of Translation/Misterios y Enigmas de la Traducción.”

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", Cockneys, cultura, culture, Davis, English, español, inglés, jerga, language, lenguaje, lunfardo, Pablo, rhyming, rimas, slang, Spanish, traducción, traductor, translation, translator

2013-12-30 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Happy New Year, Feliz Año Nuevo…!

Click here for Spanish/Enlace para español

January antique almanac

Dear reader,

This is the greeting of the moment, which in Spanish can be expressed several ways: “¡Feliz Año Nuevo!” (Happy New Year), “¡Feliz Año!” (Happy Year), or “¡Próspero Año Nuevo!” (Prosperous New Year).

New Year’s Eve is la Nochevieja in Spanish: literally ‘the old night’.

January (Spanish enero, not capitalized) is named for Janus, the Roman god of doorways, who had one face looking backwards and another forward. As most of us do at this time of year: New Year’s resolutions (Spanish resoluciones de año nuevo) appear to date back to Roman times. Breaking them is likely just as old.

The year hasn’t always started in January. Among other dates, that honor fell for many centuries to March 25, in the early springtime of the Northern Hemisphere. January 1 replaced it when the Gregorian calendar was adopted (in 1582 in Catholic countries, later elsewhere, including 1752 in England).

For dates from Jan. 1 through Mar. 24 of the years around the time of the changeover, one often sees O.S. (Old Style) or N.S. (New Style) following the date, meant as a clarification: in the Old Style, the year changed not on Jan. 1 but on Mar. 25. So, for instance, Mar. 14, 1753 O.S. would be Mar. 14, 1754 N.S.

In the French Republican calendar, after the Revolution, the year started on our Sep. 22.

The fiscal year, depending on the country, begins the first of January, April, July, or October. The school year starts in March in the Southern Hemisphere, traditionally in September in the North (though now, schoolchildren glumly face an ever earlier start, as early as the first week of August!).

Other New Years are not fixed: this year the Jewish New Year will be Sep. 24-26; the Islamic, Oct. 24-25; and the Chinese, Jan. 31.

Even birthdays can be considered, and many people do think of them this way, as the beginning of a personal new year.

In truth, every year brings many New Years. May each and every one of them, in the course of 2014, bring health and prosperity, dear reader, to you and yours.

¡Buenas palabras… Good words!

Pablo

Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT,  is an ATA Certified Translator (Engl>Span) and a Supreme Court of Tennessee Certified Interpreter (Engl<>Span). An earlier version of this essay was originally published in the Dec. 30, 2013-Jan. 5, 2014 edition of  La Prensa Latina, Memphis, Tennessee, as part of the weekly bilingual column “Mysteries & Enigmas of Translation”/Misterios y Enigmas de la Traducción.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", año, año nuevo, calendario, certificado, certified, Certified Translator, happy new year, new year, Pablo Davis, Pablo Julián Davis, traducción, traductor certificado, translation

2013-11-21 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

How to work with an interpreter

If you’re a patient or physician, attorney or client, it’s quite probable that at one time or another you’ll use the services of a foreign-language interpreter. Some ideas and suggestions to keep in mind:

  1. An interpreter converts spoken dialogue from one language to another, a translator with written text. Two separate professions, two distinct sets of skills (though there are professionals who perform both, at a high level).
  2. Whenever possible, use the services of a professional interpreter certified by one of the following: Legal: The Supreme Court of your state (Certified is the highest level, while Registered means the person has not passed all of the required examinations), the Federal Courts, or NAJIT. Medical: IMIA, CCHI, or NBCMI. (The ATA certifies translators.) These certifications represent an important level of reliability and professionalism. And they can be verified; falsely claiming certification is fraud—an illegal act.
  3. It’s very common for bilingual children or friends to be used as interpreters. In legal and medical matters particularly, this is not advisable. There’s too much at stake to leave things in amateur hands. And there are issues that minor children should not be hearing and interpreting.
  4. Though it doesn’t feel natural, make every effort to look into the eyes of the person you’re talking to, of addressing them directly as “you”—almost as if the interpreter weren’t there. The interpreter is part of the interaction, facilitating your conversation, but is not part of the conversation, so you shouldn’t look at the interpreter and say, “Tell the doctor that…”  The interpreter must use the first person, “I” (Spanish yo) except when speaking for him or herself, and then it’s the third person: “The interpreter wishes to clarify…”
  5. There are two main modes of interpreting: consecutive and simultaneous. In consecutive, an individual speaks, then pauses while the interpreter interprets what was just said. If you’re using consecutive interpreting, it’s important that you keep your sentences short, so that the interpreter can be as accurate and complete as possible. If you’re stating numbers, addresses, or dates, say them slowly. In simultaneous interpreting, the interpreter conveys what’s being said in “real time”; a skilled professional interpreter can keep up with the pace of the person, or persons, for whom he or she is interpreting, usually with just 1 or 2 seconds’ delay.
  6. Interpreting is one of the most complex activities the human brain can perform. The pressure on the interpreter is great, especially in the legal and medical fields, and is mentally and physically exhausting. Respect the interpreter’s need for breaks (or the interpreters’ need, if the interaction is lengthy and there is more than one interpreter assigned to it), not just out of concern for that person’s health, but also in order to assure the highest possible level of work.
  7. If you’re unsure a word was interpreted (translated) correctly, just politely ask to go back to it.
  8. If the interpreter pauses to ask a question or get clarification of a particular point, don’t be alarmed: almost always, that is a sign of professionalism.
  9. If the interpreter’s utterances are significantly shorter, or longer, than those of the persons being interpreted, there could be a problem. The interpreter is not supposed to give a summary of what was said, nor embellish or add to it. It’s not a matter of the word count or timing being exactly the same, but the length and degree of detail between the original language and the interpreter’s version should be roughly comparable.

Pablo Julián Davis, PhD, CT, has more than 25 years of professional experience as interpreter and translator. As an interpreter, he is Certified by the Supreme Court of Tennessee and has passed the Federal Courts’ Written Examination. He performs varied interpreting work, with a legal/judicial specialization as well as work in medical and other fields. As a conference interpreter, he has worked with distinguished world personalities including Rigoberta Menchu Tum (Nobel Peace Prize laureate), theologian Ada María Isasi-Díaz, journalist David Bacon, the late writer Julio Cortázar, and others.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: Certified Translator, interpretation, intérprete, interpreter, interpreting, Memphis, traducción, traductor, traductor certificado, translation

2013-11-01 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Is Día de Muertos/Day of the Dead a ‘Mexican Halloween’?

by Pablo J. Davis

We’re in the brief interval between Halloween, widely celebrated in the US, and the festival known as ‘Día de los Muertos’ or ‘Día de Muertos’ and associated primarily with Mexico, though it’s observed in different ways throughout most of Latin America. It’s a good time to think about cultural similarities and differences.

La Calavera de la Catrina, the brilliant creation of Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada, has been the icon of El Día de Muertos for a century now.

Many in the US think of the ‘Día de Muertos’ (Day of the Dead) as the ‘Mexican Halloween’. But is it really so? Does the one ‘translate’ to the other? Just as the Spanish word ‘amigo’ (or ‘amiga’) and English ‘friend’ may be side-by-side in bilingual dictionaries, yet tend to mean quite different things to the people using them – and the same can be said for familia/family, fiesta/party, and countless other culturally significant word pairs – so Halloween and Día de los Muertos may share certain symbols, and the time of year, but are markedly different phenomena.

The (often unsuspected) differences between what many people think of as equivalent holidays is not quite what is meant by the term  ’false friends’.  The latter term refers to words that appear to the foreign speaker to mean one thing, due to their similarity with a familiar word in her language, but that in fact mean something different.  An English speaker, on reading in Spanish that ‘Gómez sufrió repetidas injurias a manos de Pérez’, may imagine that Pérez repeatedly assaulted Gómez, causing him physical injuries; when in fact, Spanish ‘injuria’ means insults, lies, slander, and other sorts of verbal attacks.  False friends can be tricky, but ultimately are fairly easily caught and corrected by speakers with good mastery of both languages.

Not so cultural phenomena.  There the differences are more subtle, may not even be captured by the bilingual dictionary.  Most English speakers, for instance, more readily use ‘friend’ where a Spanish speaker tends to use ‘compañero’ or ‘colega’, reserving ‘amigo’ or ‘amiga’ for a closer relationship. In other words, ‘amigo/amiga’ is a harder title to earn – we can think of it as perhaps socially more ’expensive’ – than is ‘friend’. No criticism of either culture meant here: it’s simply a cultural difference, an important one that can cause hurt and misunderstanding when not perceived by one side or the other.

What does all this mean for Halloween and the Día de los Muertos?  These two holidays, seemingly close equivalents if not downright interchangeable, map very differently onto the two cultures.  Halloween is largely about defying and even mocking death, about neutralizing its terrors by rendering them theatrical.  There is a kind of daring play involved, a dancing around the macabre.

In Mexican (and, more broadly, Latin American) culture, el Día de los Muertos is something else entirely.  One celebrates, remembers, honors, one’s deceased loved ones – parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles – it’s common to hear people speak of ‘mi muertito’ or ‘mi muertita’ (my beloved dead one) for a deceased father or grandmother, spouse or sibling. Ancient, pre-Columbian and pre-Christian traditions of ancestor worship and love were intertwined, over the colonial decades and centuries that unfolded after Contact and Conquest, with the Christian calendar and rites to create something new: scholars of religious history and culture refer to ‘syncretic’ religious practices.  Thus the celebration of the Día de los Muertos came to coincide with All Souls Day, or the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, on the Christian calendar.

The ramifications of ritual involved in this festivity are elaborate and complex.  The baking of cakes in the form of skulls and skeletons, the making of skeletal figurines often fully dressed and adorned with hats and other accessories, the fashioning of altars bearing photographs of beloved dead and containing offerings to them, the creation of satiric verses, and a rich graphic tradition of death-related iconography (most famously in the work of José Guadalupe Posada, whose ‘La Catrina’ is above left) are just some of the flowerings of festive practice that the Día de los Muertos has given rise to.

Though there are some cultural-religious practices elsewhere in Latin America that have some commonalities with El Día de los Muertos – for instance, the cult of ‘San La Muerte’ (Saint Death) in the Guaraní cultural zone of northern Argentina, southern Brazil, and Paraguay, deeply rooted in the populace but rejected by the Catholic Church as pagan practice – there is nothing quite like the centrality of El Día de los Muertos in Mexican culture.

Still, wholeness and acceptance in the face of mortality, and the imperative of sustaining connection with loved ones no longer living – the heart of Mexico’s Día de los Muertos – form a thread that runs through much of Latin America’s cultural map. Argentina’s Atahualpa Yupanqui (1908-1992) expressed this idea as beautifully as anyone ever has. Half a century ago, in his memorable anthem, ‘Los hermanos’, the singer, guitarist, composer, and folklorist wrote:

Yo tengo tantos hermanos     I have so many brothers and sisters
que no los puedo contar.        that I can’t count them all.
En el valle, la montaña,          In the valleys, in the mountains,
en la pampa y en el mar.        On the pampas and at sea.

Cada cual con sus trabajos,    Each one with his work,
con sus sueños, cada cual.      with her dreams, each one.
Con la esperanza adelante,     With hope before them
con los recuerdos detrás.         And memories behind

. . .

Y así, seguimos andando                 And so we go on,
curtidos de soledad.                         Hardened by loneliness
Y en nosotros nuestros muertos    And inside us, we carry our dead
pa que nadie quede atrás.              So that no one is left behind

Yo tengo tantos hermanos              I have so many brothers and sisters
que no los puedo contar . . .            that I cannot count them all . . .

In the end, interpreting cultural phenomena across languages challenges us to a subtlety of understanding even beyond what translation usually demands.  Things that look the same can be fundamentally different.

Copyright ©2011-2013 by Pablo J. Davis. All Rights Reserved.
This essay originally appeared at http://interfluency.wordpress.com in October 2011. It is being republished this year with  an accompanying Spanish translation.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", bilingual, certificado, certified, cross-cultural, cultura, culture, Davis, Día de los Muertos, Día de Muertos, English, español, Halloween, Hispanic, Hispano, inglés, Interfluency, interpretación, intérprete, interpreter, interpreting, Julián, Pablo, Pablo Julián Davis, Spanish, traducción, traductor, translation, translator

2013-09-27 by Pablo J. Davis Leave a Comment

Hispanic Heritage: Why Spanish Matters

La Mezquita, or Cathedral-Mosque of Córdoba, southern Spain, is considered one of the treasures of humanity and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its majestic geometry embodies the encounter of Africa, Europe, and Asia that unfolded in complex ways in medieval Spain and helped shape the modern Spanish language.

Spanish dominates foreign-language study in the US: 865,000 college students took it in 2009,  followed by French (216,000) and German (96,000). Spanish enrolls more than all other world languages combined. In K-12 public schools, the dominance is even greater: 2007-08 figures showed 6.4 million taking Spanish (72% of all foreign-language enrollment), French a very distant second at 1.3 million.

Why is the “language of Cervantes” so widely studied (if not always mastered)? Here are some of the more common reasons:

A large and growing population. The US’s Spanish-speaking population, over 40 million, surpasses all but a few Latin American countries. Many see Census numbers alone as proving the importance of Spanish and making it “the language to learn.” Not to mention geography: the US shares a border with the most populous Hispanic country in the world, and millions more Spanish speakers live in the Caribbean, not far from Florida’s shores.

Community service.  Idealistic young people in substantial numbers pursue Spanish to serve immigrant community needs such as literacy, health, legal aid, and education, or in missions of faith. In turn, those interactions often become an arena for “service learning” where classroom knowledge of the language is put to the enriching test of real-life experience.

It’s “easy”?  The perception of Spanish as easy to learn is widespread; college students typically see it as the shortcut to meeting language requirements.  It’s a half-truth: Spanish really is a marvel of grammatical and phonetic consistency, due in part to Nebrija’s 1492 Grammar (one of the earliest for a modern language) and the 1713 founding of the Royal Spanish Academy. But true mastery of the language is anything but easy to attain.

It’s “funny”? Fascination with “Spanglish”— incorporation of English words and patterns into immigrant speech—treats as odd the natural result of language contact between populations. In any case, this linguistic resource hardly amounts to a dialect, much less a separate language. Somewhat different is the popularity of “Faux Spanish”: “no problemo”, “perfectamundo”, “mucho macho”, or “el grande jefe” convey a playful, at times mocking, attitude towards Spanish and its speakers.

Laborers. Many North Americans associate Spanish with poorer, often undocumented, immigrants—an understandable perception based on current media and political obsessions, and perhaps personal experience.  In this view, the language is useful to communicate with, and manage, laborers. It’s not really a “serious” language, though: this was actually the message a prestigious private school in Virginia explicitly placed on its website in the recent past, with the boast that for reasons of academic rigor, they proudly offered only French as a foreign language. The same unexamined premise was shared by the judge in an Amarillo, Texas family court who infamously, in August 1995, ordered a Mexican-born immigrant mother to stop speaking in Spanish to her five-year-old daughter, as using that language constituted “child abuse” and would condemn the girl to a future “as a housemaid.” (Both the school and the judge did later about-faces in the light of avalanches of public criticism.)

A “quaint” culture.  It’s common to hear people express love for the culture, often in terms of salsa (cuisine) and salsa (music and dance).  Adjectives such as “colorful,” “quaint,” simple”, and “exotic” paint a Hispanic world of peasants, rural and village life, “traditions”. This view can unintentionally place Hispanic or Latino people in a primitive past, even outside of time. An associated perception sees Spanish as the language of places college students on Spring break and other tourists go to run wild, places—many of them—that the United States once conquered, occupied, or dominated. Indeed, this is the other side of the coin from language-of-manual-laborers. A long history of power relations has planted such deeply-rooted habits of thought.

Quite a mix of reasons (and it’s only a sampling)! Sincere interest in other cultures is there, as are a calling to service, faith, and love of justice. So, too, are simplistic romanticization, patronizing superiority, and power agendas.

Here are some other, crucial reasons why Spanish matters and why learning it is one of the best things you can do in the early 21st century:

A global language. Spanish now ranks second in the world in number of native speakers, with over 410 million (approximately 1 in 20 members of the human race), trailing only Mandarin Chinese. English, with over 360 million worldwide, is in third place, right behind (though when we add the number of people who speak English as a second language, it moves into second place). Portuguese, which I like to call Spanish’s “fraternal twin”—no living language is nearly so close a relation to English—has over 220 million native speakers, mostly in rising economic powerhouse Brazil; Spanish speakers can understand Portuguese to a considerable degree and have an automatic head-start in learning the language.

Economic power. The US’s 53 million Hispanics (1 in 6 people!) spend some $1.3 trillion annually; Spanish-speaking countries’ combined GDP, $3.4 trillion, equals industrial giant Germany; add sister nation Brazil, and at $5.9 trillion it matches Japan. There are countless markets to sell to, jobs to be done, texts to be translated, by people with significant mastery of the language (inseparable, in the end, from cultural understanding).

A world civilization.  Every language bears witness to a people’s experience and creativity.  For Spanish that includes ancient Iberian, Celtic, Roman, and Germanic legacies, as well as the unique Rom or ‘Gypsy’ presence (Spanish gitanos, a word derived from egiptanos and bearing witness to the passage of part of that wandering people into North Africa via Egypt); a near-millennium of Christian-Jewish-Muslim coexistence; the world’s first global empire; and, today, twenty multicultural societies of indigenous, African, European, and Asian heritage.  Just one example of the cultural richness that Spanish embodies: in societies viewed as overwhelmingly Christian, one says ¡Ojalá! (Arabic Inshallah) for “I hope so!”

The Knight of the Woeful Countenance. Likely the world’s best-known and loved work of fiction, Cervantes’s Don Quixote crowns a literature that includes the brilliant 17th-century Mexican poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz; the greatest of modern stylists, José Martí, who died fighting for Cuban independence; Chile’s beloved poet Pablo Neruda, Argentina’s Jorge Luis Borges with his metaphysical mysteries, and master storytellers of our lifetime like Colombia’s García Márquez, Peru’s Vargas Llosa, Mexico’s Carlos Fuentes, Chile’s Isabel Allende, Julia Alvarez of the Dominican Republic.

Recovering one’s own heritage.  Significant numbers of US-born (or raised) Hispanics are English-dominant, even monolingual (note that the Hispanic/Latino population, at 53 million, is larger than the Spanish-speaking figure of 40 million). For “heritage learners,” as the language-teaching profession calls those who grew up with significant home exposure to Spanish, learning it can be a powerful reclaiming of family and cultural legacy.

An outlook on life.  To master Spanish is to learn another way of being in the world, a peculiar combination of seriousness, humor, hierarchy, and dignity. The native English speaker learns to tuck away that ever-present, imperial pronoun “I” (the only one English capitalizes!), taking on a more sparingly-used yo: Spanish embodies a certain modesty.  One learns words for relationships and customs English can’t name: compadre or comadre if you’re their kid’s godparent, tocayo if you share the same name, sobremesa for staying at the table talking after a meal.  Saying Nos vemos mañana (See you tomorrow), one often adds si Dios quiere (God willing): a small linguistic bow to the Deity, or simply to life’s unknowns.

There are many valid reasons to learn Spanish; it’s fine as preparation for a Cancun vacation or to improve HR.  But a global economic force, a major world literature, and the quest for genuine intercultural fluency offer other motivations that can be mind-expanding, even life-changing.

Copyright ©2013 by Pablo J. Davis. All Rights Reserved.

Pablo J. Davis provides professionally-certified translation/interpreting services, and cultural coaching, through Interfluency.com. He has formal graduate training in Latin American History. A version of this article was published by The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN) on Fri., Sep. 27, 2013.

Filed Under: Interflows Language+Culture Blog Tagged With: "Pablo J. Davis", bilingual, Certified Translator, culture, Davis, English, English-Spanish, español, foreign language, heritage, Hispanic, inglés, Latin America, Latino, Memphis, multicultural, multilingual, Pablo, Spain, Spanish, Spanish-English, translation, translator, USA

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Go to page 4
  • Go to page 5
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 7
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Interfluency Translation+Culture

Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address, then click on Follow! to follow this blog and receive email notification of new posts.

    First Name *

    Last Name *

    Email Address *

    Latest Posts

    • Tonight, sometime around midnight, will mark the 300th anniversary of… well… how shall I put it?
    • Drinking a unique toast
    • The violent alienation of “ajeno”
    • No “mere drudge” or slinger of words: Our teacher and friend, Samuel Johnson

    Tags

    "Pablo J. Davis" cultura culture Davis English español inglés Julián Pablo Spanish traducción traductor translation translator
     

    About Us

    Interfluency Translation+ Culture offers top-quality, reliable, professional services in two broad areas: linguistic and cultural. We also consult to help organizations identify and implement meaningful, quality solutions to cultural and language-related challenges.

    Latest Posts

    3.4.18 Tonight, sometime around midnight, will mark the 300th anniversary of… well… how shall I put it?

    By PABLO J. DAVIS Sunday, March 4, 2018 Tonight marks an extraordinary anniversary… of an extremely ordinary event, one that occurs millions of times a day around the world. ...

    12.20.17 Drinking a unique toast

    Enlace para español/ Click here for Spanish Dear reader, In this season, many a glass is raised and “toasts” offered. The word seems to come from an old custom of using spiced ...

    12.10.17 The violent alienation of “ajeno”

    Enlace para español/Click here for Spanish Dear reader, Recently your faithful servant stumbled across a recording of a song he had heard from time to time, but has now had a chance ...

    Latest Tweets

    Tweets by Interfluency

    Contact Us

    • +1-901-288-3018
    • info@interfluency.com
     

    Copyright © 2022 Interfluency™ Translation+Culture

    Website by John Gehrig

    • Copyright Notice
    • Privacy Policy
    • Site Map
    • Contact Us